?? How to Avoid The Content Rabbit Hole & Stay Productive
Hey friends,
Hope you’ve had a great week!
In today’s edition:
With a change in my routine (new job), I’ll be changing my newsletter release from Sundays to an early weekday morning, either a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday AM. I’m giving myself some time to figure this out but the format remains. I’ll share a win and a lesson from the previous weeks as well as something cool that’s having a positive impact on my productivity and creativity.
Quote of the week:
We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one”.
- Confucius
Self-expressing changed my life in my 30’s
I grew up in a culture where self-expression was rarely encouraged. My circles were very open to giving advice and guidance on how I should live my life.
When I felt an emotion, whether it was fear, sadness, shame, anger, boredom, love, guilt - it was very short lived. This was my norm. I was encouraged to be strong and resilient. There was often “not enough time” to feel and process my emotions because the world would not wait for me. That was the approach I was encouraged to take. It was my reality.
I guess it was their way of protecting me from the world. That’s how I see it now. Whilst my circles taught me a lot about strength and courage, this approach meant that over the years, I lost my voice and I chose to deal with challenges by ignoring them.
As I got older, this naturally became a problem. Instead of processing my thoughts and emotions, I often disguised them and avoided them. It shaped the default path I took: school, college, uni, corporate job. I really didn’t know what else to do with my life.
Recently my wife and I were talking about our dog Nova’s obsession with pigeon feathers!
On our walks, Nova’s mission would be to find as many pigeon feathers as she can and eat them. It was a bit frenzy and dangerous as she would launch herself at them at every opportunity, often at the expense of her safety. It was like she was possessed!
It got us thinking and we came to the conclusion that she may be bored on her walks.
When Nova was a few months old, we were training to walk her off-lead in a forest behind our house. She was highly stimulated by her surroundings. At the sight of any rustle, she’d lock onto her target and make a dash for it. She’d lose all sense of her direction and be gone out of sight and sound in a matter of seconds.
In a panic, my wife would stay in the spot where she decided to bolt off and I’d go look for her. We often feared for her safety or losing her again so we limited the time she spent off-lead to enclosed areas only.
Cue a new pigeon feather hunting habit.
Some days after our conversation, something unexpected happened. Nova and I were on a familiar path leading up to some open fields that we had not explored before and I had a sudden moment of realisation thinking about her obsession with pigeon feathers:
Was I protecting Nova from the world at the expense of her being able to express herself?
It hit me in that moment. I’m putting Nova through everything I had experienced when I was younger.
I felt her sadness, I felt her boredom, I felt everything I had felt when I was younger again, but this time through her. It was loud and clear. I felt an enormous amount of guilt.
I will never forget this moment.
I suddenly took a deep breath and with my heart in my mouth, I bent over and detached the lead from her harness.
“Nova go!”
Off she went like a rocket!
With treats in hand she came back on call time and time again.
I could see how much this meant to her, I could see the emotions on her face. Nova has a particular way of saying ‘thank you’. It’s usually a lick on any bit of visible skin or she’ll do this cute thing where she rubs her face against my leg or face. Every time she came running back to me she would give me this in abundance. Her eyes lit up. I could sense how much she’s wanted to be free and how much fun she was having.
They were beautiful moments that I’ll never forget.
This experience made me reflect in so many ways and it may be something that we can all reflect on:
Whilst Nova’s love for pigeon feathers is still strong, she’s certainly less attached to them and she surprises me when she drops a ‘catch’ to keep up with me on our walks.
Nova is a free spirit, she loves adventure, she’s courageous, she loves being able to run wild, she loves to explore, she loves to live life on the edge and that’s who she is.
I’m super grateful she’s reminded me of how I felt when I was younger. Self-expression can be so powerful for us all. It changed my life in my 30’s. When I finally opened the door to expressing my emotions, thoughts and ideas, magical things happened. I understood myself better. I made deeper and more meaningful connections to those around me. I opened up a new world.
At a time where I’m about to be a father, the timing of the reminder of how our behaviour can indirectly affect others couldn’t have been more perfect.
领英推荐
Capture thoughts, ideas and actions to Notion - offline
Last week was intense.
New job at an exciting start up, commuting into the office, staying on top of 3 strength training sessions at the gym, playing football twice a week, walking Nova daily, adapting to a new routine, early starts, late finishes, a lot of new information, helping out at home where possible as my wife is heavily pregnant, continuing to write this newsletter and other commitments to developing skills outside of work - it was a recipe for disaster. How am I going keep up with it all?
If I had to give myself a rating of how I handled last week out of 10, I’d give myself a good 9, I’m really pleased with how the week went.
I went into the week with the mindset that I know things are about to change dramatically and instead of feeling stressed I should go into the week with the mindset that it’s ok to have this unpredictable week. It’s ok to not know how the week is going to play out and whether or not I’d be able to achieve the things that I normally do on any given week.
Whilst I think this intention played a massive part, I was also able to achieve a lot of the things I set out to do through building habits and systems.
One of the systems I built for writing this blog was to capture moments of inspiration in the week. During moments when I’m not actively thinking or doing a menial task like making lunch or commuting, I get bursts of inspiration. These are the best moments for me to capture thoughts and ideas and often lead to my best work.
A challenge here was how can I capture thoughts and ideas in one place so I don’t have multiple places of capture which is then a pain to review when I need the information.
The solution for this was quite easy. I use Notion for pretty much everything and I created a outline template for the newsletter which helps reduce the time I spend every week.
Capturing thoughts and ideas in the week was also quite easy. I usually have my phone with me at all times so I have set up a widget on my phone to access the Notion database where I’m able to capture thoughts, ideas and actions on the go. I call it an “Actions Dashboard” but it’s really just a database that stores information as separate entries so I can review them later.
When I write the newsletter, the combination of the outline template and my actions dashboard means I usually have all the information I need to start writing.
The second challenge was how can I capture thoughts and ideas when I’m offline? If you use Notion, you know that accessing the app offline is impossible so I needed a way to send information to my actions dashboard when I have no signal.
I found a way by integrating the free version of Todoist and setting up a zap in Zapier to my actions dashboard in Notion. This setup allows me to create another widget on my phone and when I am in a place where there is no signal and I have a random thought, idea or action that I want to record then I have absolute trust that the capture will end up in my actions dashboard to review later.
So far it’s been working really well and I no longer feel like I need to remember to write something down when I get a moment, to then lose that thought or idea. This system reduces a lot of friction and time when creating these newsletters.
If you’d like me to run through this set up in more detail, let me know and I’d be happy to share it with you.
Why a read-it-later app will enhance your creativity and productivity.
You pick up your phone to Google something and 30 minutes later you find yourself scrolling or reading something that’s totally irrelevant to what you were searching for.
The algorithms are so good these days that you will almost always be presented with some information that is of high interest as soon as you’ve accessed a browser or app.
You feel like if you don’t consume that piece of content then you’re going to miss out on what could change your life forever. Silly right? We’ve all been there.
A read-it-later app can change the way you consume information. Instead of feeling like you’re going to miss out, you can simply send the article, tweet, post or video to the reader app to consume at a later date.
It’s so powerful.
Readwise Reader is the read-it-later app I’ve been using for the last 60 days and it’s by far the best one I’ve come across. Previous to this I used an app called Instapaper but the Reader app is so far beyond the capabilities of this and other read it later apps. The Reader app has the features to match how my brain works and it’s so useful!
Here are some examples of how I use the app:
Using a read-it-later app has helped me to stay productive. I rarely get side tracked, I just think “oh that’s cool, let me save it for later”. When I have pockets of time, usually in between meetings and commuting more recently, I open the app and have a list of curated content that I can consume.
As a creative it’s also allows me to stay creative. It’s been so powerful. My train of thought is less distracted by endless feeds of content and the time I spend on my phone is also more productive.
A read-it-later app is a tool I highly recommend especially if you want to be more mindful about how you consume content.
That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed the newsletter and found it helpful. If you received any insights from it, I’d love to know.
Found this useful? I’d be grateful if you could share this with anyone that you think might receive value from it.
Speak soon and have a great week ahead!
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Milesh
Accountant at Jigsol Business Solutions Limited
1 年Great read, I can definitely relate. Self expression is so important and there are many cultures in today's world that still make this difficult, particularly for men.